Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Ind. Decisions - "Prosecutors ask judge to force former Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White to serve his home-detention sentence"

Carrie Ritchie reports today in the Indianapolis Star in a story that begins:

Prosecutors are asking a Hamilton County judge to force former Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White to start serving his home-detention sentence.

White has remained free since he was convicted of six felonies, including theft and voter fraud, last February. He has been sentenced to a year of home detention, but Hamilton Superior Court Judge Steven Nation allowed White to postpone serving his sentence until after he appealed his case.

But last fall, White asked to halt proceedings on his appeal and pursue post-conviction relief in the trial court.

Attorney Dan Sigler, one of the special prosecutors who handled the case, said his team filed a motion last week to enforce White’s sentence. Sigler said White no longer has a right to delay serving his sentence because he has stopped his appeal.

Prosecutors said nothing significant has happened in the case since the Indiana Court of Appeals granted White’s request to stop his appeal last September.

“We assumed he was going to file the post-conviction relief petition right away,” Sigler said. “As long as it was litigated right away, I didn’t have a problem with that. Now it’s going into the fifth month and nothing has been filed.”